The problem with that is that you can't move the child strands manually - only the parent strands. (Even though I prefer the look of interpolated hair, at least without child hairs you have a way to get rid of those stray problem hairs.)

We talk of different things. When i say "interpolated" i don't mean child strands, but the following:When you create a hair particle system with let's say zero strands for the beginning (and no child particles), and then you go into particle edit mode and add your first hair there by hand. You pose it and maybe even give it a curly shape. If you now add a second strand at the location of your choise, the strand will be straight, but if you checked "interpolate" in the tool-shelf, your second strand would still grow from the spot you have chosen, but it would mimic the shape and flow of the first one. You only can see this button if you switch from "Comb" to "Add".Of course you can still use child particles in addition, as i did in my picture. If i'm not wrong, the problems with child strands get less annoying when you have a large scale model, because the child strand distribution radius isn't relative to the mesh but absolute. As i said - i might be wrong here...